What do you think is there a difference between covid perception and covid reality? The virus has dominated headlines for most of 2020. The inundation seems likely to continue. But do you, personally, do you have an accurate perception of the risk we face from covid?
Did you know people surveyed are spectacularly wrong in their perceptions of the pandemic? Here are the stats from one survey. Gallup did the survey. They found that on average, respondents thought less than 58% of Covid-19 deaths were people aged 55+. That is pretty dramatically incorrect. Actually, 92% of covid-19 deaths fall in that age range.
The same group overestimates the risk for young people. Respondents believed that 8% of deaths were people 24 years old and under, when only 0.2% were. The poll respondents believe young people accounted for 50 times their true proportion of deaths.
If we do not understand the health consequence how can we take proper actions? Among people ages 18 and 24, 59% worry about serious long-term health consequences. They account for only 0.1% deaths. We only have a few months of data on Covid-19. This makes understanding the long-term effects is problematic.
Polls versus CDC
The CDC notes severe cases follow the same age distribution as deaths. This infers since young people are a small percentage of the severe cases they would expect a small percentage of long term effects. They face very little long-term danger from Covid-19.
There is much we don’t know about COVID-19. One of the things we do know is the risk of death is in close alignment with age and comorbidities. For most of the public, even this fact escapes them. Something we should have recognized, but apparently did not, is how we assimilate the news we consume.
What do you think is there a difference between covid perception and covid reality? If we have been hearing about this for the better part of a year shouldn’t we have basic facts about who this virus is dangerous to down by now? Think about it. We don’t even know if we should be scared of this virus or not. Yet we are standing still for loss of liberty, forced mask wearing, etc., etc., etc.